1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an attention calling technique for calling attention so as to switch job performance from a predetermined job to another job, and particularly to a technology constructed so that an actual status of jobs can be reflected to do switching of the optimum job performance.
2. Background Art
Conventionally, in a job (also called a task) in an office, it has been required that plural jobs including a communication job should be executed in parallel. Particularly when in recent years, information is linked by networks and the information can further be accessed from anywhere by mobile environment, a scene in which while a user performs one job, communication is requested from other persons and a new job is requested increases. Therefore, it becomes important to perform plural jobs efficiently without causing trouble mutually.
Incidentally, techniques related to the invention are as follows.
JP-A-07-56748 proposes that active/inactive statuses, information about starting of plural applications are monitored and execution orders of plural tasks are controlled. For example, when desired mail comes in the case that a certain job is in a mail wait status, a user is notified that the job can be processed.
JP-A-06-95835 proposes automatic navigation in which a window including a retrieval criterion specified by a user is activated in multi-window environment.
However, in the apparatus described in JP-A-07-56748, it is targeted for the active/inactive statuses of the applications and it is difficult to deal with communication jobs (TIMESPACE IN THE WORKPLACE: DEALING WITH INTERRUTIONS, Brid O'Conaill and David Frohlich, Hewlett Packard Labs.) which occupy many of the office jobs and probably tend to interrupt an individual job. Even in the case of grasping that a community site of a mail base is communication environment, it is unnecessary to direct attention to all the moments at which writings were performed, and presentation of this to a user may result in interruption of an individual job in reverse.
Also, in the apparatus described in JP-A-06-95835, it is targeted for an application and it is difficult to deal with communication jobs and further it can be applied to a job using a WEB site in which an interest item can be preset, but it is very difficult to apply this to a form of a conference in which the contents vary dynamically and further in the case of supporting simultaneous progress of plural jobs, it is essentially necessary to consider a balance with a status of performance of an individual job and the conventional technique is lacking in this support.